


i have seen damnation

by Alienea



Series: The Inherent Romanticism of Dragons [28]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Lack of self-esteem, Multi, Nyarl's backstory: here to make people sad, in which i am rude to nyarlathotep, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25385389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alienea/pseuds/Alienea
Summary: Nyarlathotep and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad LifeOr: I gave an eldritch god Doctor Carmilla Trauma (Not Clickbait!!!)
Relationships: Nyarlathotep/A Bunch Of Shitty People
Series: The Inherent Romanticism of Dragons [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832185
Comments: 8
Kudos: 72





	i have seen damnation

**The God of a Thousand Forms**

In the beginning, Nyarlathotep does not exist. Azathoth is the only one, rolling over the planet in swathes of destruction, leaving an area just long enough for them to rebuild before destroying it again. Nyarlathotep would never dare to suggest that ve could understand the workings of their father’s brain, but that just seems boring. So Azathoth split into three, the Nameless Mist and Darkness and Nyarlathotep, and for a while the three of them roamed the world, running up against the boundaries that their erstwhile father had set.

Darkness only operated at night, going into a torpor during the day, even inside shadows or in numerous vessels. Which was a dead giveaway, really, when the people you were possessing laid down to sleep at day and were active at night. That made it hard for Darkness to keep vessels secret. Even centuries later, when Darkness has gone to dissolution, creatures with trace amounts of Darkness inside them went on to be one of the paths that made vampirism. Watching vampirism happen was one of Nyarlathotep’s little pleasures- seeing them evolve over and over was quite interesting.

The Nameless Mist barely needs vessels, spreading across the land slowly and inexorably. Seems boring, but Nyarlathotep’s too busy with nir own business to try and reach out. Frankly, Darkness and the Nameless Mist have never reached out either. And the Nameless Mist was beaten back by humans, instead of absorbing them. They learned to manipulate the wind, and where to live to avoid both Darkness and the Nameless Mist. Humans never learned to avoid Nyarlathotep.

But why should they? Unlike cer siblings, Nyarlathotep doesn’t need to consume humans. In fact, the thought seems somewhat idiotic to Nyarlathotep. Ae can possess any object, take any form, and there’s no need for human company or human anything but manipulation in order to feed and learn and grow. The energy that humans release when thrown into chaos and confusion is  _ delicious _ and they keep on making it! Even when they’ve felt the same fear over and over, they  _ still feel it _ . So Nyarlathotep doesn’t have to do anything that reduces that amount of humans on the planet in order to be quite well fed.

Besides, humans are interesting! Nyarlathotep likes them, really. Their forms are so varied, and their nightmares and dreams are more varied still, teaching vir how to shape and be and draw energy from myriad humans, what trades they consider  _ fair _ and what trades they consider  _ unfair _ even if Nyarlathotep doesn’t really understand the differences. Not much is fair in life, as far as she can tell. The idea that it could be or should be is strange. Azathoth certainly wasn’t, and he was the first life on this planet. If the first life wasn’t fair, how could anything after that be fair? So Nyarlathotep discarded the idea of fairness and went from place to place, collating data from across the planet, scattered human settlements seeing the void absorb them just to spit them back out when their knowledge is consumed.

From this, Nyarlathotep builds a sense of how to make deals and how to trade with humans. It might bring in less power, but it’s more sustainable. Chaotic and panicked and confused humans are more likely to fall to Darkness or the Nameless Mist, after all. So Nyarlathotep trades protection for power, the awe of these small and primitive creatures as Nyarlathotep teaches them fire to burn away the Darkness in return for the presence of shadows to watch from, and agriculture when the Nameless Mist prevents them from roaming and foraging in return for a tithe.

It works. Even when people don’t believe, even when Nyarlathotep leaves them for generations at a time, the deals are upheld. Nyarlathotep rakes in power and knowledge, and grows almost past aer siblings.

Then the Nameless Mist and Darkness decide to follow the path of their father.

**The Howler in the Dark**

Ey can’t remember the first’s name, any more. He was- he was. The details of him have been lost to a desperate desire to forget those early days after the loss of his siblings. Nyarlathotep might not have interacted much with eir siblings but the loss of them, first merged together and then split apart to make new children, hurt more than Nyarlathotep could have expected. Xe should have expected it, though, ve was certain that maybe if he had just reached out, been there for them- but she hadn’t been. Ne had been with the humans, whose minds Nyarlathotep’s was shaped in the image of, learning and delighting and collecting power. At some point, walking the delicate tightrope between her eldritch self and human self had become what Nyarlathotep was absorbed in, instead of just letting humanity be a mask slipped over the eldritch thoughts.

Maybe that was why they weren’t told. Why eir siblings had abandoned em. Je had had to find out about Darkness and the Nameless Mist had done when one of their children found Nyarlathotep and had to be put in its place. Nyarlathotep had interrogated it, and that is how the dissolution of Darkness and the Nameless Mist was discovered.

And so ce was alone. Well. There were the children. But Nyarlathotep didn’t know how to interact with them any more than they knew how to interact with her. The first found Nyarlathotep in the middle of a deep forest. Nyarlathotep doesn’t remember anything about the first, anymore. There’s a faint impression of hands, and a smile, and Nyarlathotep can’t remember if it was self-satisfied or kind or just a resting smile. Nyarlathotep was mourning, a vortex of void and emotion safely quarantined from all, and the first came. The first took xem into (himself? Herself? Themself? Nyarlathotep doesn’t remember, it could have been any pronouns or none) their human form. It was the first time Nyarlathotep had been in a human vessel.

That was when Nyarlathotep found the final gift that vir father had left. Inside a human, she could control them completely, but they could control him just the same. The first vessel that Nyarlathotep ever had ended torn in half and ve was inside them and they reached to the sky, rampaged across the world howling the combined pain of two beings caught in a battle for dominance and uncaring of the destruction around them. Nyarlathotep can’t remember, now, how xe ended up like that. Zir own memories are shrouded and lost on purpose, the signs of intentional fogging all over them, and Nyarlathotep is too cowardly to discover why.

Human vessels did not get better from then. The knowledge was out. The First had been alright for a while, and Nyarlathotep had enjoyed being two-in-one, a union that he had never thought to try and experience before. There had been no reason not to talk about when they both thought it would last forever. But then- a betrayal, by one of them, lost to history and memory, and the years-long rampage had quite thoroughly reclassed Nyarlathotep from a neutral force to a being of destruction and evil.

Then to a tool.

**The Bloated Woman**

She was a rescuer, Nyarl remembers that much. She came to help cer, felt like an angel descended from above to cradle vir. She was bright and kind in the beginning. She didn’t even force Nyarl out of zir current physical vessel. Vessels had become a necessity for Nyarl, instead of an occasional strategy. Without a vessel,  _ anyone _ could come along and just become one with Nyarl and Nyarl didn’t want that. Nyarl emphatically wanted to avoid that, now. A known was better than an unknown, even if it was a terrible known. 

Nyarl still wants. A better life, better vessels, anything better to break this cycle of being used. Nyarl wants that. It won’t happen, Nyarl is already aware. Life has taught that lesson. But something slightly better. A working relationship, something well defined. Then she came, and for a moment Nyarl did believe in more. For years, even, they lived together, were together, and Nyarl got a say in how she used the power that ce granted. It didn’t go wrong for decades.

Nyarl should have realized that of course a witch would operate on a different time scale. They lived so long, of course she would just need more time to decide that she needed more out of their relationship. Nyarl should have expected it, but she had been so kind. Nyarl still remembers her cradling them, looking at cer with love, and working with em to discover new ways to apply long-known spells, innovating and creating together. It was one of the happiest times, since Nyarl had been alone. Working together with her to make something new, breathe life into automatons and help with healing, and it took too long for Nyarl to realize that something inside of her had rotted.

Hindsight was always perfect, wasn’t it? In retrospect, Nyarl realizes that it was when her parents died that she went strange. Her parents had been old, anyways, having had her late, and she had been alive for so long that they had both reached old age. And the two of them had checked- they had died from nothing more than old age. She remained unaging, kept in the moment of becoming cer vessel. Nyarl didn’t think to supply much more comfort than the basics, when her parents died, and she had always kept her emotions a bit closed off. Xe respected her right to privacy, and left her her thoughts and emotions most of the time, just skimming the basics. So ve didn’t think to comfort more- he hadn’t been alive when Azathoth died, after all. Parents... Well. How was Nyarl to know how much they meant to humans? 

She started her experiments in prolonging life for others only a decade after her mother slipped away. Nyarl didn’t watch. Nyarl asked her to stop, and she didn’t, and it hurt, and she kept on going, for decade after decade, snatching people off the streets when she couldn’t get them to come to her willingly. And they did come to her willingly- she made sure that she was still a respected witch. She made Nyarl hide the monsters in her basement, where she churned out experiments and got no closer to true immortal life. The creations she made were pitiful. Amalgamations of metal and magic and flesh that creaked and died despite her best efforts, lasting barely as long as a normal human would.

None of it would bring back her parents. None of it would keep anyone else that she wanted to keep alive in anything more than a tortured half-state. Nyarlathotep thought, often, that immortality was more of a curse than anything else, and she turned her attention to curses, honing that craft and still got no closer to immortality. Nyarlathotep made sure not to even think at a hint of the idea that ve could make others immortal. Not many, and upon the vessel expelling em the ones held in immortality would begin to age normally, but. This wasn’t something that Nyarl was going to share, with this vessel, and xe buried the knowledge, kept it out of sight even when she started picking through the rest of cer memories, tutting with fake disapproval at nir actions, and. He hurt. Nyarl hurt, and she could feel Nyarl hurting, and kept going.

She went further.

Nyarlathotep does her best not to remember the rest of the experiments that Carmilla ran.

In the end, they told her how to achieve immortality without relying on Nyarlathotep.

Xe also found out that vampires, being technically undead, cannot be vessels.

It was the kindest release yet.

**The Black Pharaoh**

Nimue picked up Nyarl after several vessels had attempted and failed to contain cer. It wasn’t- it wasn’t their fault, it was just. They leaked, after Carmilla, stained everything inside and out with void, and the only reason Nimue didn’t die as well is that she waited for xem to heal, and kept away other aspirants until ve had.

She never had any pretensions towards being kind, at least. It was a business arrangement. She and Nyarl would work together for the longevity of her empire, and Nyarl wouldn’t have to- wouldn’t have to do anything to people, manipulate them like that, and that was really all Nyarl could ask for. Making an empire be cohesive is almost relaxing. It’s the same sort of planning that Nyarl did all the time, back when humans didn’t even bother with buildings meant to last more a winter. So it goes well, in the beginning.

It goes as well as Nyarl can expect, anymore. Ve’s not dissected, laid out and examined and hurt inside and out and mentally and physically. Ae’re tired all the time, drained and kept just aware and awake enough to be able to act that this is a choice, like Nimue had convinced them, wasn’t ordering them, hadn’t forced them into a contract.

It raised her social status. Nyarl started keeping to eir room. There’s no reason to interact with people when they’re all deferential or afraid. There’s no conversation to be had, and none of it makes Nyarl feel better. Xe doesn’t want to hear about the education rates in Nimue’s empire, or the increasing life expectancies, any of it.

Ae’re just tired. There’s no energy to do anything.

Nyarl isn’t sure how many centuries pass, like that. Every time cer limits expand, and more magic starts to flow in, Nimue uses it. It’s better than some vessels, Nyarl reminds herself. It’s better than many. There’s no reason to complain.

Then a witch comes. Nyarl almost denies her entry on sheer principle- witches have brought nothing good to him, and been very painful. But. What can she do, that Nimue would allow? For all her mercenary relationship with Nyarl, she’s always tried to keep Nyarl producing as much magic as possible, and. Well. Torture is not conducive to that. So Nyarl agrees to meet the witch.

It’s one of the best decisions Nyarl has made in millennia. She’s smart, and kind, and she wants to learn, and she hasn’t even started to be shaped by a mentor. So Nyarl sets her free of those limits, free to learn any path of magic, to learn anything and make any magic she wants, and Nyarl is so, so happy for her. Maybe ne’ll even see her again, one day.

Then she gets a message.

The Council isn’t happy that she dodged her assigned mentor. Her mentor is coming to get her. Her mentor is Carmilla.

Nyarlathotep- doesn’t remember what happens next.

A lie, but a comforting one.

**Nyx**

They woke up in a pyramid. After - after. He had  _ built _ the pyramid, a place where nothing could ever reach Nyarl to hurt zir again, and then aer sibling’s children had broken it open, unleashing the pain and despair and if Nyarl was frank the self-loathing and depression into the world, warping the outside of the pyramid, spiking it and making it rather more dramatic.

Nyarlathotep hadn’t meant for this to happen. Ne was able to stop all the negativity pouring into the world, but then people came in. So Nyarl added warnings, letting people know, changing and refining them based on what people said when they entered the pyramid that was the embodiment of every negative emotion Nyarlathotep had ever felt, and none of it stopped them.

Raphaella visited, once. She came in, and she wept, and she couldn’t hear Nyarl as ey desperately tried to speak to her. She said she was sorry, and that she had had plans to help free Nyarl, and that she had failed, and she would carry that with her. She told Nyarl what she was doing with the magic that ne had taught her. Then she left, still crying.

It helped, for a while.

There was one that came in just to reach the Trader, which- if Nyarl could have done it again, wouldn’t exist. It was barely under Nyarl’s control, and it worked to bring out the worst in everyone. So when the man placed his hand on it and asked for something to legitimize his rule- Nyarl was just barely able to stop it, and reach out, and make a deal.

_ You wish to legitimize your rule of Nimue’s old lands? _

“Yes.”

_ Then defeat her. _

Nyarl leads the man to the shambling corpse of Nimue. Imbued with the power that had burst out of Nyarlathotep in a panic, held together by rotten strings of magic and cloth and flesh, and larger than life, she shambled through the pyramid, looking for Nyarlathotep. She had accosted many of those that came in attempting to claim Nyarl, assuming they were the new vessel, and when the man- Arthur, he said he was- stood in front of her, she assumed so again.

“Come back.” She held out hands with fingers twisted long and grasped towards Arthur, who did not answer. “Leave him, Nyarlathotep. We were so good together. We made an empire. You said it yourself, no one ever treated you as well as I did.”

“I don’t have the creature.”

Nimue screeched, drawing her sword, and attacked.

“You’re keeping cer from me! I need him! My empire must be rebuilt!”

Nyarl tuned out. It was the same every time. At least now an invader might kill her, instead of running away.

He killed her. He took her sword. It was a fine sword- enchanted, make by Nyarl to not break or rust, a beautiful creation. And it was well-known as the leader of the empire’s sword.

_ Leave with it, and build your kingdom. _

He left.

He was the first to leave with what he wanted. 

Not longer after, a new group entered the pyramid, and Nyarlthotep was too tired to even rant or wail, to do anything but quietly ask for them to leave. One of them came to em as a literal knight in shining armor. Seriously, Nyarl hadn’t seen anyone enter the pyramid with armor that well cared for in- decades, at least. People enter when there’s nothing left for them, or at sword-point. Not like this, in a group, looking well-equipped. That... that stopped when they all died. Again, and again.

Nyarlathotep was so tired of death.

Sir Lyfrassir Edda, ae thought, was not going to be much different.

They were.

They were so, so different, and all Nyarl did was hurt them, all Nyarl did was dig eir claws in where it would hurt most and tear, wanting to drive them away before they died and became another thing for Nyarl to regret, and he made it worse and worse until finally they picked up Nyarl’s vessel and it was all for nothing. Because Lyfrassir had her, and Nyarlathotep was going to ruin someone else.

**Author's Note:**

> Me halfway through writing the bloated woman section like oh! This is Carmilla! -rewrites but only a tiny bit-


End file.
